


The Inadequacy of Belle Le Beauté

by ThePrincessofPain



Series: The Tale of Isobel and Gaston LeGume [2]
Category: Beauty and the Beast (1991), Beauty and the Beast - All Media Types
Genre: Belle is a replacement, Belle/Beast - Freeform, F/M, Gaston has Anger issues, Gaston was married before, Hugo the mutt, LeFou is a good friend, Mostly Canon Compliant, One-Sided Belle/Gaston, You really should read The Tale of Isobel and Gaston LeGume first, and a poor one, and issues in general, to Isobel (OC)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-20
Updated: 2018-03-20
Packaged: 2019-04-04 23:45:38
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 894
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14031483
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ThePrincessofPain/pseuds/ThePrincessofPain
Summary: He didn't mean to lose his temper. He just wanted Belle. He should have known you can't replace the real thing with a copy.





	The Inadequacy of Belle Le Beauté

 Gaston hadn’t mean to stab him. Really, he didn’t. It was widely known Gaston had a temper, and he supposed that was the reason he was currently falling. He had let his temper get the best of him. The beast had done him no wrong. He might even be as docile as she claimed he was.

 Her. Iso-No. Belle. She wasn’t Isobel, no matter how much he wished for her to be. Maybe that was where he went wrong. He knew when she was alive Isobel had a tendency to humor him. He also knew that for all he wished her to be, Belle wasn’t anything like her.

 So, they both were readers. And they were both generous sweet girls. Not to mention they looked so much alike it was hard to believe they weren’t twins. He would think he was crazy had other people not remarked on her resemblance (Isobel’s father in particular, he noticed, grew fond of Belle because of her likeness to his deceased daughter). He had stupidly assumed they were the same person, attempting to court Belle in the same fashion he had courted Isobel, while also trying to fix what Isobel always said were his flaws.

 She said he never had enough confidence, so he made it a point to be more assertive towards Belle. Reading books had not saved Isobel, so why should Belle read them? Isobel loved it when he flexed, and listened when he talked about his hunts, so he made sure to do so as much as possible around Belle. Surely, they were so alike they would wish to be courted similarly? He even proposed to Belle exactly the way he had proposed to Isobel.

 But it didn’t work. Belle refused to go on walks with him. She seemed upset when he plucked a book from her hands to look at it a and offended when he asked where the pictures were (Isobel always loved books with brilliant illustrations), huffing when he teasingly held it above her head. She didn’t jump for it with playful annoyance on her face like Isobel, but instead stomped away while he watched her, confused. Couldn’t she take a joke?

And then, she had run away after his proposal. Poor Maurice went mad with grief, claiming she was kidnapped by a monstrous beast. He had stared into the man’s eyes and seen the desperation, the conviction that what he said rang true, inside those sad familiar eyes. Eyes he saw when he woke up in the morning (not as The Great Gaston, but simply the widower who had lost his wife and child) and looked in the mirror.  And what had he done? He’d thrown the old man out into the cold. Some great hero he was!

 He was not proud of what he had done next. Bribing the man who led the sanitarium to take Maurice away, to try to get Belle to marry him. He’d thrown LeFou into the unforgiving winds to wait for the girl to return. She came back, and he thought she just might agree to his proposal. But instead she spoke of the same beast her father did. And when he showed disbelief, she showed them an ornate mirror that contained the beast’s image. He was ugly, but some part of him felt sympathy. He looked like Hugo, Isobel’s mutt. He almost let it go, looked up to tell her that when he saw the love in her eyes.

 Gaston wished he didn’t remember more. That the red leaking into his vision was justified, but it really wasn’t (she couldn’t love him, but she could love a beast? She couldn’t be Isobel?). He snatched the mirror from her hands and showed the beast to the crowd. Told lies, and riled them up. When Belle pleaded, he sneered down at her, and told the villagers to lock her in her father’s workshop before asking the mirror to lead them to the beast.

 He gripped Isobel’s wedding ring in his hand, knowing that this hunt might be his last. But by god he would kill the beast that took his second chance away from him. He started up the steps, ignoring the villagers being attacked by furniture, his eyes for the prize. He walked up steps, and turned a corner, only to come face to face with the ugly thing.

 His eyes were humanoid, and they made Gaston uncomfortable. He fought with the beast, his mind a jumbled blur of hit, switch, parry, block, until a clawed hand around his throat stopped him. He struggled for a second before going limp. He felt the beast’s paw on his neck tighten and he wheezed as his vision started to go dark. He thought of Isobel, and smiled. He could almost hear her voice. The beast dropped him, and he saw him go up, crawling towards (who he thought in his oxygen deprived mind was) Isobel. Gaston gasped, and in a chance to distract him, he grabbed the dagger from his boot and dug it into the monster’s back. It let out a howl of pain that sounded so human he let go of his only foothold in shock. As he slipped and fell from the roof, that last thing Gaston saw was Isobel’s horrified face.

_Isobel. Please forgive me for what I’ve done._

Gaston hit the ground.

**Author's Note:**

> Up Next: Feeling trapped inside the castle walls, Belle goes for a walk around the castle. There, she finds LeFou and discovers something about Gaston. Legitimately a major character death warning, because someone dies, and melancholy is my flavor of the month.


End file.
